Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Tuesday December 12, 2006 @02:29AM
from the nothing-definitive dept.

Alien54 writes to tell us The Register is reporting that based on reported revenues this year iTunes sales are plummetting. From the article: "Secretive Apple doesn't break out revenues from iTunes, but Forrester conducted an analysis of credit card transactions over a 27-month period. And this year's numbers aren't good. While the iTunes service saw healthy growth for much of the period, since January the monthly revenue has fallen by 65 per cent, with the average transaction size falling 17 per cent. The previous spring's rebound wasn't repeated this year."

Here in the land of the truly independent artists [cdbaby.net], iTunes sales have almost DOUBLED. iTunes is paying our clients almost a million dollars a MONTH in sales, now. (My company is one of the back-end digital distributors of audio to iTunes, Rhapsody, EMusic, etc.)

I feel like this is the same story as "CD sales are declining!" The whole time you've heard that in the news for the past 6 years, physical CD sales for small independent artists has shot WAY up.

It's like you were looking at one of those stock charts that compares two different companies' stocks. The big famous artists would be that stock whose value has fallen from $100/share to $70/share. But the independent (mostly unknown) artists are like a $1 stock that is now at $5. It's more newsworthy to talk about the big visible stock falling, but the real story down here is in the huge boost that the indies have gotten from improved distribution / availability.

No, this is just some bad data. If "secretive Apple" isn't publishing data, where do that get it from? Oh yeah, Forrester...

*crickets*

I'm probably missing something and that's okay. Because you can analyze numbers to your hearts content, the point that all the "analysts" are missing is that most of the DRM'd music that's been released is backcatalog, plain and simple. Did it ever occur to anyone that many people probably splurged on legal tunes that they already loved and owned to get it onto their iPod (or whatever). Now that they have all the favorites/classics/etc., there is no reason for them to keep pace with whatever of the 70% crap that the industry pumps out.

Maybe the industry is just slowed down while they wait for Brittany, Nickelback and whatever shitty country singer to release their new album? Stop thinking that small decline in numbers means THE INDUSTRY IS DEAAAAAAD. It's ridiculous.

Did it ever occur to anyone that many people probably splurged on legal tunes that they already loved and owned to get it onto their iPod (or whatever).

Why would anybody buy a song they already own on CD???

Ripping a song from CD to either AAC or Apple Lossless is faster than downloading via a typical broadband connection.

iTMS is awesome for a very specific purpose: 1-hit wonders.

Anybody who makes an album of consistently good music, I'd rather hunt down a used CD and rip it to a Lossless file, but if I only want one or two songs from a particular artist ever, and I'm not too fussy about hi-fi sound, then $1 per song is a good deal.

It's not even necessarily stupid. The trick is to keep costs low enough that people who want to listen to a single track buy it off your store rather than get up, find the CD in the living room, and rip that track.

Most of us here probably listen to music more on their PC or portable players, but that doesn't apply to most people, who probably haven't ripped much of their music collection.

Yup, a Senior and her parents at my daughters high school tried to SUE another student for the cost of all her music on her ipod because he erased her ipod in class as a joke.

The funny part is people ARE most certainly stupid, they don't even understand that plugging the ipod back into the computer will load all the music back on. These are really rich business executives and their child. Too stupid to understand, too lazy to even take a couple of minutes and read or even plug the stupid thing back in and watch it start automatically. (I guess their time as well as their childs time is EXTREMELY valuable)

Says a lot about the state of intelligence in the world.

BTW: it took their lawyer to explain to them the extremely complex operation of the Ipod before they understood what others told them many times.

CDs have "been around" since 1982 yes but they weren't the primary means for most people until well into the 90s. It's only in the last decade that your average family car has been a CD instead of casette, the arse end of a lot of ranges STILL have tape players.

Hell, I'm 26 and I've rebought a reasonable amount of stuff on CD or downloaded it that I have in tape only form. I wasn't CD only until I went to university in 1998.

I have a nasty suspicion that a *lot* of people are technically ignorant to the extent that they believe buying it on iTunes is the only option to get it on to their iPod -- or that it is, in fact, faster.

In fact, building on your point about "hunting CDs down", I'd have to say that given the scenario where you want one favourite track of an old CD, and you know the CD is down in a box in a cellar, and you can't wait and you must have your music now (because you are a true child of the modern world and listening to music all the time wherever you are is a god-given right), then downloading that one track off iTunes is almost certainly faster than finding that CD in the box in the cellar, bringing it upstairs, ripping it.. ah, you get the picture.

I reminded myself last night why I do NOT use iTMS. We just got new cell phones for Christmas and my wife wanted "If I Had $1,000,000" by the Barenaked Ladies as a ring tone, but she couldn't find her Gordon CD since we've recently moved and it's boxed up somewhere. So I thought: "Hey, no problem, I'll just go download that track for 99 cents from the iTMS". Big mistake... her phone, of course, only accepts MP3s (among other lesser types) as rin

I swear, once I find those CDs, I'm going to go through our entire collection and rip every one of them using some lossless codec and store them on a hard drive. Every time I purchase a song that employs digital restrictions management I get burned by it. Apple can take their iTMS and serve the sheeple.

I've backfiled my collection to a small degree from iTunes. Mostly in the 1-2 songs per album way you describe. I agree 100% with the original poster. I purchased just about all I'm going to purchase from iTunes because I have a pretty solid collection now. New music is total garbage and because of this, my iTunes purchasing habits have mirrored exactly what has been described - slowed to a snails pace.

No, for the most part, new music is crap. (I'm talking mainstream here)Who's touring these days? Just about every single one of the bands your parents grew up with that have enough members still alive and able to hold a guitar...not much else.

Who's putting out albums? Well, those 'retro' bands again for one. And the contrived band-in-a-box crap. And a million and one bands that consist of a 'pretty' face, cookie cutter songs, and not a single real instrument in sight.

"and I don't want to have the particular discussion that could easily ensue here."

OK. Guess I won't waste your time.

Me? I think anything an artist wants to use to make art is just fine. I get to decide whether I like it or not, without making normative statements about the "realness" of their chosen tool and medium.

It's also worth noting, that especially where the back catalogue is from a time before CDs, 90% of tracks on any vinyl album were filler and B-sides that no-one ever wanted to listen to, but had to because they were on the album.

There are dozens if not hundreds of bands where I like one song and one song only. Now it's possible to get just that one song and not pay for crap I will never listen to. The records companies are now reaping their just rewards for bad seeds they sewed 30 or 40 years ago.

The time for record companies to die is overdue. Please only buy music second hand, or directly from the artists.

I keep seeing this on slashdot. All I can say is (with my tongue somewhat in cheek) that you guys must be listening to the wrong music!

All the albums I buy have maybe 1 or 2 tracks I'm not overly fond of, max, and 10-15 that are good. And I'm not buying in any one genre either. Just looking at what I've bought in 2006, the following don't really have ANY weak tracks: Ojos de Brujo - Techari (Flamenco hiphop fusion), Breakage - This Too Shall Pass (dub-influenced drum'n'bass), Shpongle - Nothing Lasts (

The WSJ already had an article [wsj.com] about the "stalling" of online music sales, claiming that it's happening for the first time. They include a chart, where you notice something interesting. The exact same thing happened last year (so it's not the "first time"), and then sales skyrocketed through the holidays as everyone got their nanos and iTunes cards. In fact, I remember the news coverage exactly 12 months ago talking about iTunes sales supposedly flatlining.

Speaking to The Register, Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff warned against extrapolating too much from the figures.
It may reflect a seasonal bounce that hasn't yet manifested itself. However, it might not.

So maybe there's something going on... maybe not.

More than that, The Register is not exactly a trustworthy news source. Think of it as the supermarket tabloid of Technology News. I wouldn't be surprised to see something like 'Steve Jobs an Alien Lovechild' on it's front page.

More than that, The Register is not exactly a trustworthy news source.

To the contrary. I think it's more authoritative than 95% of the "news" that's linked from here. (John Dvorak -- give me a break.) You may disagree with their opinion pieces, but that's another issue. And Slashdot submitters, thorough malice or stupidity, have submitted many of their joke pieces as straight news. They're not to blame for the non-existence of Slashdot's vetting system.

The Register is not exactly a trustworthy news source. Think of it as the supermarket tabloid of Technology News.

The Register and the Inquirer (founded by the creator of the Register after losing a power struggle at the Register) never sign NDAs. That means that they rarely get the inside scoop. But, it leaves them completely free to report whatever they dig up, whenever they dig it up.

So, you have your choice - Press Release journalism from places like Anandtech, Tom's Hardware, etc or "You'll know it as soon as we know it" from places like The Reg and The Inq.

Pick your poison. I choose the later - better to get it wrong by accident than by some PR flack's direction.

After reading TFA, I'm not sure if what they're deducing is actually real or not. But I can tell you this - when I can get a real CD on Amazon for $10-12, and it costs me exactly that for a noticeably lower-quality digital-only version of the same album, then I see no reason to buy from the ITMS. I don't pirate music; I buy what I want... and the vast majority of my purchases these past three years (the time period over which I've owned an iPod) have been in the form of CDs.

The bigger question, though, is this: Does Apple really care? ITMS can't be making them any sort of profit compared to iPod sales; and iPod sales are still going up. All in all, Apple seems to be enjoying a healthy bottom line.

Errrrr, according to the article, sales are dropping. So I'd say yes - Apple probably do care

If the article is correct in the assumption that sales are dropping due to DRM (which would seem to hold true in my experience), then I'd say Apple would care alot - nothing worries a company more than a division's future earnings collapsing.

Futhermore, ITMS music shackles a consumer to an iPod. A portion of future iPods sales rely on ITMS sales right now.

Ever tried to burn your songs to CDs? Apple's DRM is just so that teenagers don't just copy their whole music library to other people. If you are an audiophile, well you probably don't mind waiting for a music DVD from Amazon and you wouldn't think of playing it on an iPod then.

I do remember reading that Apple operated ITMS at a loss in order to sell iPods. So, I agree, who cares.

But if people are rolling their own MP3s, they can easily move to any other iPod clone. If they have a big iTunes collection, they're pretty much locked in to iPod (I know, there are ways, but nor as simple as copying an MP3.)

The fantasy of iTunes lock in is rather weak. Anyone downloading iTS music is unlikely to be freaked out by some hypothetical loss in quality from buring to a CD and reimporting it. It wasn't high end audiophile stuff to begin with, so anyone who could hear the difference woundn't be experiencing the problem.

Vendor lock in is not Apple's plan, its the fantasy of people trying to vilify Apple for selling a good product. There is minimal profits with selling RIAA music, since Apple only gets a few cents anyway. The real money is going to the RIAA, or in the case of iTS indies like CDBaby, the artists. The value Apple adds is the service and convenience, and that makes its overall system of iTunes and the iPod more attractive. That's why iTunes doesn't work with other music players, and that's where Apple makes its money: the iPod hardware.

Microsoft thought the money was in downloads, so it set up PlaysForSure to inject itself into stores and players to make tax money on every song moving around. Unfortunately for them, there was no volume of songs being sold. The new Zube is hoping to make money on hardware sales, but because its priced to compete with the iPod, its not making any money either. And subscriptions aren't going to result in anything either - Microsoft bet the farm on music rentals, and consumers are clearly even less interested in signing up for music rentals that they are about buying tracks online.

No amount of analysis studing the buying habits of 7000 people, less than half of whom even use the iTS, will tell you much about how well the iTunes store is doing. Apple's own numbers make it clear that everyone with an iPod isn't buying music. In fact only a minority are both willing and able, since the store doesn't sell music worldwide.

Apple is building a platform based on hardware profits, the same thing it has always done. Microsoft is trying to tax a system with licensing fees. The difference is that in this arena, Microsoft doesn't have cheaper, higher volume hardware sales to ride. It's trying to ride a minority of the market: a fraction of the installed base, made up of less profitable hardware. It has further splintered its efforts by breaking the Zube off from PlayedForSure.

The other missing component between the PC business and the music player business is that music players don't need specialized software, they can run the same music users already have. So Microsoft is also lacking an equivalent to Office to sell its music customers. This is not another Windows.

The fantasy of iTunes lock in is rather weak. Anyone downloading iTS music is unlikely to be freaked out by some hypothetical loss in quality from buring to a CD and reimporting it.

No, but they might figure that the inconvenience of having to jump through those hoops just to listen to the music they've paid for is a reason to stay away from the iPod+iTMS system.

That is, if you buy an iPod, buy a bunch of DRM'd music for it, and then decide next year that you like another player better, you can look forward to hours of burning and re-ripping. If you buy a PlaysForSure device, however, then there's at least some chance that the player you like better next year will also be a PFS device

If you buy a PlaysForSure device, however, then there's at least some chance that the player you like better next year will also be a PFS device.

You have fun with your PlaysForSure (ObsoleteForSure, more like it). Do you seriously think that there will be a single PFS device for sale in two years? I'm pretty optimistic that iTunes+iPod will still be a viable option in two-years time, however.

The basic idea is lots of individuals contribute small amounts of money to get studio time for underground bands. Each band has a running total, and once they reach $50,000, Sellaband sends the money off to an agent who arranges for the band to record an album, which is then given away for free. Sellaband is quick to point out that all $50,000 goes to production, and they don't keep any of it for themselves.

Make your player truly affordable for a full time college student working a full time job, give me the ability to easily take all the songs I buy to any device, any media I wanna take them to, and we'll talk.
In the meantime, I'll buy CDs from my local indie record store, and do with them as I see fit.

Wait, you want them to make a player you can afford, and you still want to say "screw 'em" if you can't easily take your music to a competitor's player? Doesn't sound like you're giving them an incentive to do either.

When there was only the iPod as a really good portable player, iTunes was the only game in town. Now when you can get decent quality alternatives, interoperability is becoming a much bigger issue and DRM is like a doorstop not letting anyone in.

And when people can't get into a particular venue, they'll look elsewhere. And science bless the internet, there's a lot to choose from these days.

When there was only the iPod as a really good portable player, iTunes was the only game in town.

Either you're rewriting history a little bit, or you're using a very different definition of really good than I would. The iPod was a relative latecomer to the digital audio player market, and to someone like me, who fancies himself something of an audiophile, it's still not really good. At most, Apple pedestrianized the DAP, introducing the concept to people outside of the techie and audiophile markets that alr

Well then its not a good way to track sales. Apple offers gift cards as well as paypal in the US at least. I often by my relatives iTunes gift cards for birthdays and sometimes christmas gifts. My mom gets at least $45 in gift cards a year for instance. Also, gift cards are available at local retailers like Target, etc. That wouldn't be tracked in the Apple store (online) sales either. (regardless of payment method)

I can think of one reason the conclusion maybe true though. Since Apple started selling tv shows and movies, I've bought very little music from them. Most of my iTunes budget goes into shows now. I've bought every episode of Monk, and various other things. I've got about 30GB of content that was purchased through ITMS between two computers. This does not include my wife's collection.

Another poster was also right. I have purchased most of the older tracks that I'm going to buy. At this point, I buy tracks from a few new albums if I actually like the song.

Finally, I use iTunes on Mac OS and Windows XP nearly everyday. I often stream from my iBook to my windows machine to use my nicer speakers. It does seem a little buggy and I can't stand the hidden equalizer. I've noticed that it acts up when downloading from Apple if my network connection is maxed out. I've also noticed that it locks up frequently on my Mom's PC last time I was there. She's on a dialup and even trying to get album artwork will cause a freeze. After 20 minutes I just killed it since there was no activity on the dial-up. Apple needs to fix iTunes quickly. There's room for improvement in usability too. My mother is having trouble using 7.0 and she jumped from 4 to 7. I get calls every few days because she had it crash or can't figure out how to do something.

As for iPod sales, I know 4 people getting shuffles and one getting a 30GB iPod.

Don't forget that the author of the article is Andrew Orlowski. His particular axe to grind is that he wants all of us to pay for digital music via a mandatory flat licensing scheme. That is, all of us would pay a bit (or a lot) extra for our broadband access and that money would be used to pay artists, publishers, etc. Thus, I'd take any predictions he makes about iTunes collapsing as either A) wishful thinking on his part or B) an exaggeration of what Forrester really told him.

Other industries improve their products over time. Where's the product improvement here?Last time I checked Apple was still trying to sell DRM'd low-fidelity 128-bit MP3's.Ultimately iTunes is a store for ignorant music shoppers who don't know that the musicthey're buying is crippled and sounds significantly worse than a CD. When the publicbecomes more discerning, its typically time to improve your products. Hello? Apple?

correction: low-fidelity 128-bit AACs, which do actually sound a bit better than 128-bit MP3s. And using my cassette adapter into the stereo of my 10+ year old car, cruising down the bumpy road at 50+ mph with my AC going full blast, I'm guessing I'm really not going to miss any frequency loss from the source material.

All the music I have purchased over the last 2 years has been from Candyrat [candyrat.com] records. Here you will find some very impressive artists, not the run-o-the-mill, overhyped bands and singers. They feature "NO DRM", high bitrate MP3's (I'd prefer OGG but I need to bitch about it) and many albums have an electronic equivalent of the album cover.

Why would I possibly consider tieing my hands with DRM or itunes even ?

The article starts off by citing Forrester's authoritative figures:"Forrester conducted an analysis of credit card transactions over a 27-month period. And this year's numbers aren't good..."But then it casts a HUGE shadow of doubt with this:"(The figures don't include gifts redeemed via the iTunes Store. While Apple can argue this does not reflect the volume of transactions taking place, it gives a more accurate picture of what customers are actually prepared to pay for.)"

By reading that article (burn job de' jour), and most of the comments here so far, you'd think iTMS only sells music. Man - talk about tunnel vision.

...it doesn't. Movies, TV shows etc . are also part of the menu, so much so, that some are wondering how much longer Apple can call it the 'iT Music Store'.

Ok, so for the sake of whatever, we'll ignore the other digital fares for a moment, and talk about music sales out of the iTMS. Check the calendar...what, a dozen days from now and Santa will do his fear-factored chimney drop, right? All those USD$79.00 2G iPod Shuffles that are being stuffed into stockings as we speak, along with untold tens of thousands of other iPods & iMacs, are going to come online all at once. The bounce for the iTMS will not be trivial, in any case, easily echoing well into 2007 - perhaps just in time for the iTV, iPhone & wIdescreen iPod to hit the shelves and then...bamn...another bounce.

Collapsing - give me a break. The only thing collapsing is the patience of Apple's shell-shocked competitors, as they try to endure being dragged around the town square behind a team of slathering wild horses...again.

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered iTunes community when IDC confirmed that iTunes market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all listeners. Coming close on the heels of a recent The Register survey which plainly states that iTunes has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. iTunes is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent The Register comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Steve Jobs to predict iTunes future. The hand writing is on the wall: iTunes faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for iTunes because iTunes is dying. Things are looking very bad for iTunes. As many of us are already aware, iTunes continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

The iTunes Store is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core customers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time iTunes Store customers Bob and Jill only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: iTunes Store is dying.

...

All major surveys show that iTunes has steadily declined in market share. iTunes is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If iTunes is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. iTunes continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save iTunes from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, iTunes is dead.
Fact: iTunes is dying

Sales are down since January, hmmm? Gee, I wonder what happens in January... Could that be the month that huge numbers of people who received iPods for Christmas try out the iTunes store for the first time? How about waiting a month and comparing January to January figures before drawing conclusions about a "collapse"?

For reasons earlier posters have done an excellent job of outlining, I'm skeptical about the article and its methodology, but even if they're correct is the situation really a grave concern for Apple? The (barely profitable) iTunes Music Store exists to sell (highly profitable) iPods, not the other way around. As long as iPod sales are healthy (and apparently they're very healthy) the effects of "collapsing" sales at iTMS would be secondary or tertiary concerns for Apple's digital music player business. Apple's big wins from the iTunes Music Store come through FairPlay DRM lock-in and influence in the music industry, neither of which is yet affected by these supposedly "collapsing" sales figures.

The kids that I know of that buy stuff in iTunes mostly get their iTunes funds from gift cards purchased in stores. If this guy is trying to track iTunes sales by tracking credit card transactions done directly with iTunes, he's going to be missing a ton of business that is now driven through gift cards. Those credit card transactions will show for the retailer that sold the gift card, not for iTunes.

I wont speculate on iTunes sales as the method the data was collected was sketchy. I will say that there are three reasons I see why their sales might be dropping other then just seasonal variation.

Vendor Lock / DRM:Why on earth would I pay hard earned money for a music format that locks me into a single vendor? iPods are spiffy and all, but your music collection becomes junk if you change to a non-Apple MP3 player. Yes, there are ways around this, but none of them are simple and easy lossless conversions. People are starting to see new MP3 players come out to compete with the iPod. Perhaps they are taking a second look at their music collections and asking if they want to be tied at the hip to Apple?

Pricing Scheme:Other online music services offer alternative pricing schemes that might be eating into Apple's business. Rhapsody has an 'all you can eat' service for $15 / month. The music dies if you stop paying, but until then you get to pick from millions of song for the price of one over priced CD a month. For people who want to explore lots of music cheaply and don't feel an overwhelming urge to collect and horde music, this is a steal. iTunes offers nothing to 'explorers' who don't want to break the bank. Download every song written by the Ramones on a whim with Rhapsody and you pay the same subscription fee you always pay and think nothing of it. Do the same on iTunes and you are out $150 and just made a major purchase. iTune's pricing plan works for some, but not all. Their inflexibility to alternative pricing models might be costing them people that are looking for something other then a.AAC collection at 1$ a hit.

The Long Tail:I would be utterly not surprised to learn that online shoppers are go for back order items rather then Top 40 songs then 'normal' music consumers. If this is the case, then iTunes has a problem. Online shoppers are probably consuming back order items faster then new back order items (that people actually want) are created. If I decide that I just love 1990's Ska, at some point I am going to download all of the good 90's ska that there is. Top 40 is not going to make any new songs to replace this, so I will simply stop downloading. Consumers might be 'filling up' on the back order songs that they wanted and not finding anything new to continue consuming.

No, I am not a real employee and yes I do like the subscription services.Let me explain it real quickly why I like subscription services. Right now, I have 3488 tracks from my subscription service on my HD. That is 15.6 GB of music. That would cost me $3488 on iTunes. I have had the service for 10 months and have spent only $150.

As I said before, subscription isn't for everyone. I personally like to explore music. I don't care about the 'collecting' piece of it. I like to fire up Rhapsody, download a

1) Videos do not burn as audio. I bought the new Jay Z album. For some reason the main single "Show Me What You Got" came as a video only. Fine, I thought, "something for nothing!".. Well, no, it turns out iTunes isn't smart enough to burn videos to audio CDs as just audio. So I can't burn the album to CD to play in the car. I had to buy the track AGAIN in audio format. I complained to Apple and they gave me a credit, but it still sucks, since I had to buy a radio edit instead of the album version (which is video only).

2) Woefully poor video quality. The quality of videos on the iTunes Music Store is atrocious. Even the average rip distributed illegally will be streets ahead. It's just like YouTube in terms of sound quality.. it's not even up to 128kbps AAC standards.

3) CDs cost the same. I don't know about the US, but I can buy an audio CD for the same price as an album on iTunes. iTunes is more convenient for singles, but I think most people over a certain age buy albums instead.

4) Convenience costs. You might get some convenience with the instant downloads, which I totally love, but it's at the cost of all the above.. AND the fact sound quality is worse than CD.

AllOfMP3 was one of the best things to exist and would have even been popular with a pricing scheme fair to artists and the labels.. but no, anyone who does something in a customer friendly way these days is bound to be shot down by the cartels.

So this research takes into consideration credit cards only...what about the hundreds of pre-paid iTunes cards sold each week? If they aren't tracking that, then how can they just declare that sales are collapsing?

iTunes is treating the world outside the US like an unwanted stepchild. Many of the records that are available in the US shop and which are available on CD here in Europe cannot be bought from the iTunes Store. So, what do they expect me to do? I bought a lot of music from iTunes when the store came to Sweden in the first place, but when even such main stream things as a Disney soundtrack isn't available outside the US, it is no wonder people are heading back to the torrent sites (or record stores for that matter).

Early on, I thought that the iTunes store was great. But that was several years ago, and Apple's failure to enhance it with anything other than more content and higher but still crappy video resolution is pretty pathetic. There are still glaring bugs in the Fairplay DRM system, both in iTunes and on the iPod, that have not been fixed. Audio quality is still horrible, which is a shame given that iTunes and the iPod both support lossless AAC. And it doesn't help Apple that CD prices, at least in my area, have come down some; many CDs that were $17.99 two years ago have come to ~$13.

iTunes needs a serious code overhaul, Apple needs to address the bugs in Fairplay and the iPod, and most of all, needs to at least double the bitrate of music being sold before I'll go back. And I imagine that its safe to assume a lot of other Apple customers feel the same.

... gotta figure that, overall, most accounts on iTunes have been around for a bit, and after one buys the music they're after - why would they keep buying? I've got the music I wanted, I haven't discovered anything compelling enough for me to shill out more.

While there is a constant demand for new music, much of the iTunes sale has likely revolved around people duplicating albums they either used to have, tapes they've got in a box somewhere, or all the one or two track purchases they avoided previously because they didn't want the whole album. Personally I've spent several hundred dollars there but mostly grabbing stuff I only had on tape or songs from albums that I didn't like as a whole, I rarely buy anything from iTunes now because bands I tend to prefer either no longer release albums or rarely do so.

If nobody owns the music they want, they buy it. Once most people have the songs they want, sales will tale off. It's not like nobody knew this was coming... The incredible growth rate of PC sales slowed and now companies like Dell are feeling the effect too.

For those of you who've known The Reg for a while, that statement should be enough. For those of you who are newer to it, he leans more toward sensationalism and opinion masquerading as journalism than toward things like taking statements in context and checking his facts.

He's the one who started the non-conflict between Richard Stallman and Miguel de Icaza over Mono. The original article is here. [theregister.co.uk] Stallman's response, which begins with "Your article about me, GNOME and.Net was inaccurate starting from the title. Those quotations which are accurate are taken out of context, leading to total misunderstanding," is can be found here. [theregister.co.uk]

Orlowski also had (and possibly still has, I stop reading whenever I see his name in the byline) a grudge against Google. He did a whole series of pieces about 'googlewashing', in which he accused Google of censorship, and another series in which he argued that Google News isn't Real Journalism.

On the few occasions where I've exchanged email with him personally, I found him rude, hasty, liberal with insults, and generally a putz. Back in Usenet days, he would have been called a classic flamer.

To the extent that there are real facts in this article, I don't know what they are, and I don't trust Orlowski to have presented them in any way but the one that makes him look like a daring investigative reporter breaking the scandal of the century.

Even assuming the premise of the article is true, and that Itunes Store sales have fallen dramatically, Apple will be the last one to care. The iTunes Store doesn't do much more than break even.

And for the sake of completeness, I should state my own bias by mentioning that I've spent a couple hundred bucks at the iTunes store over the last year. I'll probably do the same next year, for whatever that happens to be worth.

Legitimate users of iTunes have always confounded me. What with the way they dress and their holier-than-thou attitude.

Not quite sure I'm holier than anybody, but I simply can't stand the wasted hours trying to find good (illegal) copies of music and tv shows, and weeding through all the porn/spam/malware, when I can avoid the whole fiasco by paying a couple bucks. I don't know what you are worth, but saving time and ending up with a legitimate and decent enough quality copy is worth the $1 to me.

Instead of blowing us off as some elitist snob iTunes lovers, why not consider that money isn't always a huge factor for some people? The convenience alone is worth the price of entry.

The thing is that they're paying less and getting less, and getting it faster. Nobody ever made the claim that there weren't any reasons to get CDs.

There are tradeoffs to digital downloads. They're in a lossy format (but arguably more durable if one fails to make a backup of a CD and it gets scratched), delivered nearly instantaneously and always available (no getting out of bed or going to a store where it might be out of stock), and available a la carte for cheaper than CDs.

We already know the RIAA sucks, so there's naturally got to be some tradeoff for increased convenience and lower price. That tradeoff is being saddled with DRM. But iTunes purchases are not really any more or less "ownership" than a CD. They're just different.

I think there's more to the declining sale than just a release of iTunes 7.0. I'm no expert on how things are going but it seems Apple is expanding a bit too much as to what they offer in the online store. First, we had just plain ol' music. And that's fine given the iPod can only play music. Then it expanded to photos and then videos. Soon the store offered some music videos... then TV episodes... and now movies...

Maybe it's because of other things... but my feeling and opinion is that Apple should have stuck with music overall instead of expanding into selling music videos, TV shows, and movies.

I would like to see a mac mini with TiVo-killer hardware and software, but I doubt it will exist as long as Apple is selling TV shows in their store.

The movies and TV shows are in crappy quality aimed at the iPod screen size too, so they're a gross ripoff given that they're priced like DVDs.

I can't comment on the accuracy of your description since iTunes isn't available where I am living at the moment so I haven't been able to take a look at these services and I am to lazy to go to the trouble of making use of the loopholes. However, if that's really true and iTunes movies and TV shows are aimed at the iPod then Apple is barking up the wrong tree. Selling Movies and TV shows through iTunes is a good idea but they should tie it into Front Row and aim the sales at the desktop/mediacenter user not the iPod user. The iPod is a music player... period. I don't understand why Apple hasn't done more with Front Row and Mac-Mini combo. Perhaps they are so busy trying to wring the most out of the iPod they have forgotten about their other media products. I use a Mac-Mini as a media center along with an Elgato tuner and it works brilliantly but only because Elgato tacked a home made extension onto Front Row for their TV tuner which is a good thing since the remote Elgato ships with their tuners is (in my experience at least) complete crap. How hard can it be for Apple to create an API for TV tuner manufacturers like Elgato to use to integrate their products into Front Row? Still, it's cool to be able to control a DVD player, music jukebox, photo slideshow viewer, movie player and a TV tuner complete with recorder using a 6 button Front Row remote.

I use a Mac-Mini as a media center along with an Elgato tuner and it works brilliantly but only because Elgato tacked a home made extension onto Front Row for their TV tuner which is a good thing since the remote Elgato ships with their tuners is (in my experience at least) complete crap. How hard can it be for Apple to create an API for TV tuner manufacturers like Elgato to use to integrate their products into Front Row? Still, it's cool to be able to control a DVD player, music jukebox, photo slideshow viewer, movie player and a TV tuner complete with recorder using a 6 button Front Row remote.

I agree that the Apple Remote is an elegant implementation for Front Row's music, photos, videos, and DVD functions. However, I cannot see how those six buttons can be adequate for controlling dvr and tv tuner functions.

Even basic cable gives us too many channels to fit on a few "program guide" pages. To navigate those pages, wouldn't it be nicer to have PgUp/PgDn buttons like all modern tv remotes have? Heck, wouldn't it be nicer to have telephone-style number/text buttons to directly enter channel numbers and enter text for program searches? How about a simple "record" button to record what you're currently watching?

I haven't used the Apple remote to control dvr and tv tuner functions, so maybe Apple has done something very clever to make it simple. However, I'm pretty sure more buttons would make it simpler to contrl tv/dvr functions.

I agree that the Apple Remote is an elegant implementation for Front Row's music, photos, videos, and DVD functions. However, I cannot see how those six buttons can be adequate for controlling dvr and tv tuner functions.

Spot on. I have a Mac mini. Loves my mini. Loves Front Row. Loves my remote. But I have about 2,500 songs, 50 movies, and in excess of 5,000 photos all wired in.

No, NTSC is 480i (ie, 720x480), though it's actually more like 640x480 or so, thanks to signal loss, etc.

Meanwhile, a DVD is straight 480i. And the reduction in quality from that to 640x480 is probably barely noticeable (since the human eye is more sensitive to changes in verticle resolution). So are you saying DVDs are "crappy"?!?

The vertical resolution is widely regarded to be the important resolution for quality. DVDs have 480i. Itunes is 480? (not sure if it's i or p). It makes sense given that it's not meant to be viewed on a screen which draws interlaced images.

The vertical resolution is the most important because it traditionally has been so crappy, what with those tall rectangular pixels and all.

Once you have square pixels, neither direction is more significant. You just want as much as you can get of both.

Modern movies tend to be either 1.85:1 ("flat") or 2.35:1 ("Scope"). Flat films are usually presented on 16:9 TVs (which is 1.76:1) with a pinch of left and right frame clipped (it's really miniscule). Scope films do have to be letterboxed on a 16:9 TV.

DVDs support a variety [wikipedia.org] of resolutions which are letterboxed for the appropriate output. All of the NTSC formats worth mentioning are 480-line.

Fun fact: Almost all mass-entertainment films before the 1950s were 4:3.

I personally don't like it(Mediaportal is far better), but there is a myth2ipod plugin that will take all your recorded Tv shows and convert them for the ipod AND create a rss feed so that Itunes will grab the shows and shovel them to your ipod.

I have a setup for my daughter, she stopped wasting money on Itunes Tv show downloads since they load up off an RSS feed magically for her now.

Guess what, she simply fast forwards through the Commercials that the commercial skip misses not a real problem as the clickwheel makes it easy.

The movies on iTunes isn't such a bad idea, IF the iPods were really capable of playing them all the way through on battery power. When I received my iPod for Christmas last year, I was initially excited, it meant that on plane trips, I could watch a movie of my choosing, without shilling out for an expensive and space-consuming DVD player. But then I saw that the maximum battery life for video playback was 2 hours. So in reality, it's likely less, which means no movies on those long trips unless I wante

I think you'd be silly to make a decision about the hardware based on the iTMS. Lots of people -- the majority of folks I know, actually -- use iPods and don't go near the Music Store. It's ridiculously overpriced; anyone in an urban area probably has a used CD store that's easier to browse and far cheaper, not to mention higher in quality.I am in no way a fan of the iTMS, but the iPods themselves are hard to beat. Particularly the new Nano (the metal one); it clears up my biggest objection to the old model

There are multiple reasons to prefer ogg over mp3. The first is quality. While LAME gives you perhaps the best mp3 quality possible, mp3 is a technically inferior codec to ogg. The quality vs filesize ratio is simply better for ogg. There was actually a quite excellent double blind test on this, and I suspect I'm over simplifying the results: The test was done over several music categories, ranging from classical to techno. My swiss cheese memory tells me that mp3 or wma may have excelled in one or another categories, but the overall winner was ogg. Also, ogg won by larger margins, so in the cases where mp3 excelled, the difference was less noticeable than in the cases where ogg won over the other codecs.

If you don't believe me, just do some simple tests yourself. On windows take EAC (exact audio copy) and encode a few sample songs using mp3 and ogg, going for approximately the same file sizes. My experiments have always indicated ogg to be the superior choice (I have even gone so far as to have a friend do file selection for me so I would not know which codec was being played, thus reducing the effect of my own bias). A quick "ogg mp3 comparison" search indicate my results match an overal consensus. It's been discussed quite a bit on slashot as well, see http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/29/115420 4&mode=thread [slashdot.org] for example.

The other reason to prefer ogg is political. mp3's are patented technology. As such they contain inherent dangers. Once upon a time, you could play mp3's on your comptuter without paying the patent holder anything. That recently changed (see http://slashdot.org/yro/02/08/27/1626241.shtml?tid =155 [slashdot.org]. This is a pretty common technique: wait till a format is almost universally accepted, and then start charging for it. It is in fact good business. When online pundits brought this scenario up as an argument for using ogg, it was largely dismissed, but it has come to pass, as should have been expected. Now here's another likely scenario: The frauenhoffer institute accepts a bajillion buck payment from the RIAA (Recording Industry Assholes of America) to add another term to their patent licensing agreement, which enforces all MP3's to include onerous DRM management. How bad could this be? Worst (plausible) case: it could require all future MP3 playing software to refuse to play any MP3's without the DRM, force addition of the DRM tech to your existing mp3's, and break the ability of your non DRM equipped software of MP3 player to play the MP3. If everyone is using MP3's and no good alternative exists, there's a format monopoly and they absolutely can get away with this.

Ogg on the other hand is free as in freedom, and technically superior. You get better sound quality, and the only price you have to pay is to reduce the dangers of having your rights removed. Given this, it would seem that avoiding ogg is the more phobia-like (i.e. irrational) response.

Okay I lied. The real disadvantage to ogg is finding hardware with native ogg support. For example you can't use an Ipod (as far as I know). So that's a bit of a drag. But there are quite good ogg enabled players out there (I have a nice model from samsung), and as more and more market share starts using ogg, you'll see that improve.

I've never used iTunes 7.0 for downloading music, but I use it for managing podcasts. That functionality was seriously broken until 7.02 (frequent occurences included downloads hung forever, stuck video, 100% CPU) and even without bugs lacks any easy way to manage subscriptions. This was a surprise to me since Apple software usually works properly.

Concerning iTMS, my theory is that CDs are so cheap (or rather iTMS et al are so expensive) that there is little incentive for people to download songs. $9.99 for an album really is a scam when often it is on Amazon on CD for $9.99 and sometimes less. It's easier to buy and rip the CD. A CD that you then own forever.

AllOfMP3.com is still very active. Visa has stopped allowing payments from the US to them, but that's not very surprising. They did the same with online gambling, while the overseas gambling sites are still very much in existence.Russia is planning to join the WTO though, and in the process may be enacting legislation to satisfy American trade organizations, because essentially, that's what the WTO does to other sovereign nations. At that time, which is sometime not that soon, it may or may not become illeg

Your points are well made but you seem to have forgotten the power of clever marketing - for example, BluRay and/or HD-DVD where the merits of "increased disc capacities" and "high resolution video" are frequently touted but the DRM lock-in is not mentioned in all those glossy magazine adverts.

DRM is not going to go away that easily because far too many big corporations stand to make too much money from it - Microsoft (and others) for licensing the DRM algorithms and Sony/BMG/Warner/etc. for being able to